Kingfisher Ballet
There are 87 Kingfisher breeds in the world but only one the the beautiful Alcedo atthis, breeds in Europe.
The kingfisher’s contrasting colours – orange, cyan and blue – produce a startling flash of colour. product of tiny pigment granules but its cyan and blue feathers contain no pigments. These colours are ‘structural’. They are created by the intricate structural arrangement of a transparent material which, depending on its precise make-up and thickness compared to the tiny wavelength of light, produces a range of colours by ‘incident light’ – in other words light shining on the sample.
www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/why-does-the-kingfisher-h...
This image is © (All Rights Reserved)
Kingfisher Ballet
There are 87 Kingfisher breeds in the world but only one the the beautiful Alcedo atthis, breeds in Europe.
The kingfisher’s contrasting colours – orange, cyan and blue – produce a startling flash of colour. product of tiny pigment granules but its cyan and blue feathers contain no pigments. These colours are ‘structural’. They are created by the intricate structural arrangement of a transparent material which, depending on its precise make-up and thickness compared to the tiny wavelength of light, produces a range of colours by ‘incident light’ – in other words light shining on the sample.
www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/why-does-the-kingfisher-h...
This image is © (All Rights Reserved)